Meaning

I looked up at the sky tonight and saw Orion and his hunting dogs peeking through the palm fronds above my front door. It's kind of comforting to know that at this point I've pretty much had the constellations beaten into my memory, even though my time working for the Astronomy department was not altogether a pleasant one.  The stars are my friends, and a welcome sight they were tonight. It's been a while since I've taken the time to look up on a clear night, so it seems I've rediscovered an old habit of mine of stalling outside to look at the stars. 

One of my biggest challenges right now is not having goals. Some days I'll just find myself in a stupor, thinking, what now, what's the meaning of all this? At work I file things away only to have them pulled out again, and then need to be filed back. At home I wash dishes and put them away only to pull them out for the next meal and have them end up in the sink again. It's this reoccurring cycle of actions, seemingly mundane but altogether important, that I get buried underneath sometimes.

What am I working towards? Who, or what, do I want to become? These have been questions that I've had to consider, as my life lays wide open in from of me. What I know so far is 2 things: to give things meaning, and to create. Heck, all of our lives seem insignificant at some point. But if we give things meaning, realize the worth of small things, and recognize the worth of our humble creations, our lives will be less mundane. 

So hold me to this - I need to get my butt off the computer, especially kick my habit of aimlessly surfing Tumblr or Youtube, and live more meaningfully.

I'll keep you posted. 

Rejuvenated

Dear friends, I hope you have all had a good holiday season and are rejuvenated and energized for going back to normal life. For me? New Year's weekend was the best, I spent a lot of it cleaning, surprisingly, but there's just something cathartic about cleaning your house, tossing out old things, and just clearing room to breathe. I've been in a decorating frame of mind lately, always trying to think of new ways to arrange our place but as I cleaned, I remembered the saying, "Cleaning is the best form of redecorating." So there I have it!

For New Year's Eve Matt and I just stayed at home watching anime's until midnight. I'm getting old, to the point where I find it hard to stay up till midnight (I think I even fell asleep before midnight last New Year's?) but this was just perfect, something low key, you know. 

But we watched an amazing anime the other day, it's called "Hoshi O Ou Kodomo." It's so good! Very magical, with many moments reminiscent of Miyazaki, and bittersweet - I love it. It's not out in the States yet, but when it comes out, I'm totally buying it!

The picture is of a souvenir I bought at the Dickens Fair, from the pirate booth - a ship ornament. I'm getting to be quite attached to ships these days, us living in a harbor town and all. The ring is just something I picked up at Forever 21 the day after Christmas (the lines were so freaking long it was barely worth it). I coincidentally wear it every time I go to watch Rozen Maiden with my friend, which is funny cause in the show all the dolls have a magical rose ring that contains their life essence, and I swear I'm not trying to cosplay, but secretly it makes me happy. ^_^*  

Happy New Year!

Tonight we bid farewell to 2011, a year that will always remain in my memory as the first year of my "real" adult life. 

I hope you all had a good holiday season thus far!

Here's me posing in an "alley" at the Dickens' Fair, a Victorian-style Christmas Festival in San Francisco. The atmosphere there was amazing, the decorations and building facades all made to look like Dickensian London, the people dressed up in period costumes... it was very very crowded though! (but that probably added to the historical accuracy, right?)

And I still haven't mastered the art of taking self-timer pictures, but....

I just wanted to wish you all a happy new year!

The Middle of Somewhere

Yesterday I walked to the laundry room in flip flops and a t-shirt before realizing it was nearing the end of November and it's really getting too cold for that now. November, almost over? What have I been doing all this time? Well, I can think of a few things I've done recently that I haven't blogged about yet:

1. Extreme makeover: With some outside encouragement, I realized that I have, in a manner of speaking, "let myself go" in terms of my wardrobe. So I'm getting a wardrobe makeover and receiving all sorts of neat additions to my wardrobe. I've been trying to take outift pictures but have yet to find the optimal place in my house to take them. They'll be coming though, don't worry!

2. New Hair: As a result of watching too many consecutive anime shows I decided I was tired of having black hair, and decided to color my hair for the first time in my life. Luckily, I managed to have enough common sense to not dye it the red color I was obsessing over, (specifically, Makise Kurisu's hair, from "Steins;Gate") and just got brown highlights instead. It's a nice change! Of course I worried about the effect this would have on my ability to cosplay as Mana, but we'll worry about that when convention time comes around again, right? XD;

My new hair! Apparently it looks a lot lighter in real life, according to my sister.

3. Adventure Thursdays: I've had Thursdays off this whole month, so I've been driving around with my friend and having all sorts of adventures! We went to a farmer's market I used to frequent as a little girl out past the vineyards and orchards, I got to try different kinds of Filipino food and found a place I can buy all my asian food without crossing the bridge, and I went on an Air Force Base for the first time! I love exploring, it just helps you love the place you live even more, don't you think?

So it's gonna be Thanksgiving in a few days, so Happy Thanksgiving guys! I'm excited for the long weekend, yay!

This is Halloween, Nah-nah-nah

(pic from this here tumblr)

Happy Halloween everybody!

Eat all the darn candy you want! I'll just be sitting here jealous with my left cheek puffed up smothering my face in frozen peas and popping pills since I just got my freaking wisdom teeth pulled, but you know what? That's ok. Cause I got the day off work today. And I get to hand out candy to freaking trick or treaters, assuming we get any, but we BETTER cause I actually bought the candy this time! And I'm excited. (I've never handed out candy to trick or treaters before, tee-hee). And they're all gonna be like, "Your face is kinda lopsided, lady" and "Who's this crazy lady giving us Almond Joys, who even likes Almond Joys?" But man, I'm excited. Excited! 

I'm gonna keep it low key this year, just wear a random combination of black clothes and throw on a witch hat and call it good. I'll post pics if I feel brave enough to show you all my lopsided face. ^_^

Hope you all have fun!

Nostalgic 90's

This may be a lesser known fact about me, but I love 90's music.

It's kinda funny because even though I was alive in the 90's, I wasn't old enough to appreciate the music or culture yet, so why, I often ask myself, do I like 90's music so much?

I guess I should clarfiy, when I say 90's music I'm referring to mostly Brit-pop/rock and Japanese rock:, bands like The Cure, The Cranberries, L'Arc en Ciel, Raphael, Penicillin... etc. As I was getting back into the jrock and visual kei scene a few years ago, I noticed that I didn't really like a lot of the newer bands like I did the 90's bands (with the HUGE exception of Versailles). Even though the 90's bands were plagued by pixelly and blurry video footage, poor audio quality recordings, and oftentimes looked like tacky drag queens with 80's style bangs, I just loved the melodic, reverby and dream-like sound of their music.

And the other day as I was the listening to the Cure, I realized that it's not just something specific to Jrock, but that all the 90's rock bands I like have a similar sound. And I can't help but wonder, do you think the 90's will ever be a "thing"? Like right now some 80's trends are coming back, but will we ever see the 90's come back? Or more specifically, the part of the 90's that I loved?

Just some musings on a Thursday morning.

h. Naoto Grand Opening

So I went to the h. Naoto store's grand opening event last weekend in San Francisco. They were having a free gallery exhibit showcasing costumes that h. Naoto had designed for famous Japanese musicians (including Gackt, Hakuei, and X Japan!). At first I wasn't sure if I should go, or how much I would enjoy it - it was just costumes, and not the actual musicians themselves, so would it really be that interesting? But then I made myself imagine, "Would I be excited to see one of Mana's costumes in real life, even if it was just the costume and not Mana himself?" And then I realized I'd be all over that, so that sealed the deal for me. XD;

And I'm so glad I went!

Naturally, you couldn't take pictures of anything inside, but they had these wreaths outside with notes from various celebrities, congratulating h. Naoto for opening his first store in America, which I eagerly took pictures of.

Among them were wreaths from Hyde (L'Arc en Ciel), Gackt, Yoshiki and Sugizo (X Japan), and Amy Lee (Evanescence).

The gallery was quite small, but it was not a disappointment. It was upstars from the boutique, and in a dimly lit room with a projector playing a video of models striking various poses and walking around. The costumes lined two of the walls.

(Hakuei from Penicillin, wearing h. Naoto)

They had a cape that Hakuei from Penicillin had worn for a photoshoot, it was modeled after Dracula and had nails nailed through the collar that were sticking out, and made me think of nails in a coffin. A girl that looked at it and walked by made the comment, "No hugs for him!"

They had 3 outfits that Gackt had worn: that funky white one from a photoshoot where he looks like he's wearing a schoolgirl skirt, a samurai-esque one, and the vampire-like trenchcoat he wore for the Diabolos tour. The schoolgirl outfit actually had pants under the skirt, we realized, but you couldn't tell from the photoshoot because he was kneeling down. Well, I'm glad we have that cleared up now, right?

The samurai one was very Gackt, it fit his personality and strong interest in samurai and was a samurai-punk style, but I wasn't particularly interested in it.

(Gackt, wearing h. Naoto for his Diabolos Tour)

But the Diabolos tour outfit... was... AMAZING. It was a fitted trenchcoat with a hood that was oddly wrinked/scrunched, and same with the collar. The description panel next to it (which were all written in something between English and Engrish, by the way) said the piece was trying to imitate the skin of a vampire, going for an ancient, weathered look. It was amaaaazing! And tiiiiny! I could have fit into it! I was surprised. But that was my favorite, by far.

Sugizo's outfit had these ruffles going down the front, and Yoshiki's shirt was a super tight and stretchy long sleeve white shirt that the description said was made specifically to not impede his piano playing. XD; Yoshiki's shirt was the tiniest of them all.

We looked at the clothes in the boutique for a little bit after the gallery, but I didn't get a chance to try anything on because we had to meet up with my sister's date. Probably a good thing, because I probably would have bought something that would have been bad because I would be poor and we all know I'm saving up my money for Moitie, right? ^_~

But it was so much fun! I probably helped cause I had my sister there because she has experience with clothing design and runway fashion and was able to give some good insights on the costume designs, and also I had fun trying on a skirt at Baby and talking to the salesclerk for ages XD; it was fun! I feel like sometimes I just need to go to these kinds of things, to connect my obsession with Japanese alternative culture with my own real life. With it all being so far away and my not having many friends that are into it as well, sometimes I just need to know it's real.

I remember back in the day buying the Gothic Lolita Bible magazines and flipping through them with my friends, and seeing the h. Naoto dresses, and now it's come full circle and they've opened a store here, and I went to the grand opening - it's exciting.

Well, that's my review!

Sorry if I've thrown out a lot of Gothic Lolita brandnames/terminology for ya! I love you all! <3